The present invention relates generally to a material transmission medium, and more particularly to method of monitoring the transmission medium.
There are multiple industries which rely upon long stretches of a material medium in order to deliver a service to dispersed customers. Examples of such industries include (1) telecommunications and (2) electrical power. Effective delivery of these services requires that the integrity of the material medium be maintained.
Unfortunately, it is common for a portion of the material medium to experience an environmental condition or acute stress that causes the material medium to become inoperable or physically compromised. Currently, significant labor, time and money are spent in trying to determine the location and cause of a material medium's compromise.
Even when a location of a problem in the material medium is identified, the reason for the problem is often not determined. The inability to determine a cause of the problem may be due, at least in part, to the extended time needed to determine the cause. By the time the fault is located, the cause of the problem may have already dissipated or relocated. For example, if the fault was caused by flooding, the water may have receded, leaving no sign of flooding that led to the fault. Alternatively, if the problem was caused by a physical blow to the material medium, the cause of the blow is likely to be far removed by the time the location of the fault is detected. There are several other potentially damaging forces which are similarly transient and leave little trace once the damage has been done.
Therefore, it would be advantageous for suppliers of services over material transmission media to have a method for more quickly and accurately determining the location and/or the cause of a problem in the transmission medium.
Even more advantageously, suppliers of the service would benefit from being able to preempt a problem by assessing that there is a threat to a material transmission medium before there is a loss of service. If they were able to make such an assessment, the suppliers could attempt to remove or manage potential problems before their service is interrupted.
However relevant industries face significant limitations on what they can do to monitor their material media. Often, the material medium network is already installed. Therefore, a monitoring system would have to be readily adaptable to the already existing infrastructure. Additionally, “bandwidth”—the transmission capability of the material medium—may be near maximum. This means that a monitoring system would be prohibitive if it required utilizing significant bandwidth in the material medium as part of the monitoring or reporting process.
While there may be methods that are currently used for determining the location of faults; these methods tend to be slow, labor intensive, and inaccurate. Therefore, there is a need to develop a quicker, less labor intensive, and more accurate method of fault detection. Additionally, it would be advantageous if this monitoring system could also predict problematic areas in order to facilitate preventative maintenance.
There is therefore a need for an improved system and method of monitoring a material medium.
The current invention is based, at least in part, on a recognition of the following limitations which may be encountered when monitoring a material medium for a fault or a potential fault: (1) the amount of time and labor needed to find a fault, (2) the need for change in a current material medium infrastructure to support a monitoring effort, or (3) the reduction in available bandwidth in a material medium due to a monitoring device using the material medium to send data.